Trek of Joy

I have the Polar Pro 2-5 stop and cheaper one that's about 4-9 stops that's getting replaced by the other Polar Pro, I use them both, but I'm out in the sun a lot. If I were buying individual, I'd probably do something like a 3 & 6 and stack them if needed, but then you're also adjusting ISO or aperture to get proper exposure with nothing between if one is too strong or weak, I've done it both ways, I prefer the vari because its much more efficient with the way I work. But I shoot run-and-gun outdoors so I have no control over lighting, the vari-ND for me is a vital tool. YMMV. Chris

If you do the magnetic filter holders you can avoid the hassles of screwing filters in over and over. The only reason I didn't go that route is because in the end it would cost as much as the more expensive vari-ND and then I'd have to carry more filters instead of just moving the vari with my thumb as I'm shooting. The K&F looked good in that test too. Cheers Chris

Downloadable clips and probably the most excited review you'll ever see. I don't speak Italian, but they're shouting the whole time, its great.

It may just be your filter, I think there are better vari-ND's compared to the Genustech. I have the 2-5 stop McKinnon and its really nice, no vignetting or uneven color with the 16-35 on FF at 16mm. I have a couple budget vari-ND and its much better. I think I'm going to buy the other one as well, they're expensive but I use them every day so for me its a good investment instead of dealing with wonky color shifts. Buy the 82mm and just use step down rings on all your lenses with generic $3 lens caps off ebay or cheap neoprene covers. YMMV. Chris

I'll wait it out. No point in getting things now if they're already talking about making fixes, I'm in no rush. Its been an emotional roller coaster LOL! Too much time working form home.

Well you know what they say opinions are like... I think it looks really good too. Cheers Chris

A video from Bloom shot with ProRes raw and the Ninja V.

Cancelled my R5 preorder too and jumped over to the a7s3 right as it went live with B&H. I'll have a couple months to sort that one out since it doesn't ship until late Sept. The way the R5 prevents you from shooting anything other than line skipped video if the camera is hot - and the fact just shooting stills can trigger the thermal shutdown is just a deal breaker for me. The a7s3 has about 1.5 stops better DR according to Undone (the potatojet EV lift compared to the OG EOS R, wow), sharper 60/120p along with 24p that's better than the R5's standard and just a smidge behind the HQ for detail, smaller file sizes, equally good AF (which works with external recorders), cheaper cards, nice looking color, much longer battery life, and so on. You would need at least 2 bodies to shoot all day with the R5 and if its hot you're stuck with no high frame rates or HQ, so if that's the case I'm fine with one of the other a7 bodies with the Z battery and the a7s3. I'd rather have the better DR and more detailed 60/120p. Glad the s3 was announced today and not next Tuesday LOL! Chris

Gerald Undone came to the opposite conclusion. Either way, both look really good, but I'll take 10-bit over 8-bit any day. Plus his DR test showed over a stop more than the a73.

The S1h is tops, unless you need AF, that's why I'm not shooting with the Panasonic. I'm almost 100% sure I'm going with the a7s3 over the Canon's after watching all the reviews posted here. The insane amount of time it takes the R5 to cool off is a huge concern. I don't want to be frozen out of the video modes and forced to use the lower quality or no 60/120p because the sun is out and its hot. The fact that shooting stills generates enough heat to hit the thermal issues in the R5 also gives me serious pause. Every review I've seen outside of Dan Watson's has the s3 recording much longer, including not overheating indoors at all which the R5 still did for most. The R6 is even worse. But everyone's needs are different. Cheers Chris

The official photos don't have the Sony logo on the LCD - hopefully that's a goofy pre-production thing so you don't have to look at it upside down all the time.

Preorders are live at B&H, $3498.

This one is super interesting too, exif on the bottom says 100mm f/1.4 - are we getting a new lens too?

I don't think its super exciting - internal raw and E-nd's would raise it to that level for me, but with the FX we knew it would get hit with the cripple hammer - but its not underwhelming either. It looks like a really solid 4k hybrid and only the second one to bring 10-bit 4k120p to the market. Full size HDMI > micro HDMI on the R5. I ordered the R5 for the HFR video and high rez stills in one body, but the obvious thermal issues made me reconsider since I'll need to be constantly shooting with a second body anyway. Now I'll just pivot back to using two Sony bodies like I did with the a73/a7r3 - only video will be much better with the s3, with more manageable file sizes compared to the R5. The v90 cards are cheaper than the newer options for max bitrates. Not ideal as I'd like to change lenses less outside and such, but there's just no unicorn one camera hybrid solution at the moment so pick your poison. Also, those menu icon colors are horrible, but it looks like Sony finally figured out how to do a touchscreen. Chris

Agreed, bummer about 12mp. But if you went Canon you'd need a second body anyway to shoot stills to help prevent heat buildup so the s3 is the video centric body and one of the a7r's covers high rez stills. Used a7r3's are in the $1700 range, and a7r2's are well below $1000 (but you lose the Z battery and EVF/body improvements). Juggling two bodies is not as ideal as shooting some 120p video of a surfer or a bride tossing the bouquet and then firing off a burst of photos at 12fps in the same body, but it just doesn't look like the R5 will be reliable enough on long shooting days. I want the one body solution too, but its not going to happen anytime soon. My prediction after seeing the s3 specs - the a74 will do 4k60p with the higher bitrates to kick the r6 in the balls, but no mp bump, just sensor and speed improvements with the new processor and such. It'll also get the new body and the same EVF in the a7r3, it won't get the 5+m dot one in the r4 or the crazy one in the s3. Chris

This. You don't have to use the 200Mbit HS (h265), you can use the 600Mbit S-I which is h264. Not sure why there's so much drama about h265, just do't use it. I'd use the h265 on my phone (XS Max) or iPad (5th gen Mini, don't need the Pro to edit h265) with Lumafusion for quick hits with a few shots because of smaller file sizes - I do this with video from my drone and its fine. Chris Pretty sure that's S&Q mode with the low bitrate. Standard recording is 600Mbps.

Damn, all I got was half an image of a truck in an alley. I was too much into the video and forgot to record the screen on my phone. It was unlisted and now its private.

He didn't say Cinetone specifically, he said same color science as the Venice and FX9 so it can be used along side them on a shoot with no difference in color (or something to that effect)

Nokishita just tweeted out a link to an unlistied Youtube B&H review of the a7s3 that froze about 10-minutes after I started watching. The video is now private. I'm cancelling the R5 order and selling my EOS R to stick with Sony. This will be my video workhorse. A summary: A few flavors of XAVC including all-I and Long GOP in 4k and HD. You pick the level of compression, then the resolution, then framerate - from what I remember every bitrate option can record all resolutions and framerates. The tester couldn't get it to overheat at 4k60p after over an hour of recording outside in the sun. Same color science as the FX9 and Venice. The goofy colored new menus SAR had are real, full touchscreen navigation. All framerates are 10-bit 4:2:2 internal including 120fps, though the max 600mbps needs V90 cards. Full AF with all framerates, a more Canon-like touchscreen for AF. The AF points in that leaked doc are correct 700+ PDAF and another 400+ CDAF. External 16-bit raw is real, though they don't know how its actually gonna be recorded. No pans but he said rolling shutter is pretty much eliminated. IBIS is the reported 5.5 stops, looks like the same Sony IBIS. Has the ZV1 digital stabilization and the FX9 metadata stabilization - this is what he was talking about when the video froze. He didn't get to the EVF Looking forward to the announcement. Chris

Yes it looks like a quick writeup of high points once the embargo is lifted. A few things of interest - 759 PDAF points is more than the a73 on a sensor with half the mp, tracking AF should be outstanding. It notes thermal limits and though its not 100% clear, it sounds like 4k120p is internal. The prores raw out is limited to 60p, so that sounds like a Ninja V. It also mentions needing the Type A cards for S&Q 10-bit recording, I hope that's not what's required for 120p internal. That would give me major pause as the cards aren't even out yet and the price for the 160gb card in that presser is obscene. Base ISO in SLog is 640 and extended to 160. Chris

Nokishita leaked a press sheet: At the heart of the new Alpha is a 12 megapixel full-frame sensor that has been improved compared to the Alpha 7S II. Sony is now opting for a construction with back exposure (BSI), with which more light can be captured and which enables better results with low light shots. The maximum sensitivity is still ISO 409.600 (expandable down to up to ISO 40). The sensor is supported by the new BIONZ-XR processor, which is said to have eight times as much computing power as the previous image processor. Sony is also breaking new ground in operation: For the first time in the Alpha 7 series, a fully moveable monitor (3.0 inches, 1.44 million points) was installed, which now also allows touch operation of the menus. The structure of the menus has also been completely revised; among other things, only the relevant entries are available in photo and video mode for better clarity. The OLED viewfinder achieves a record resolution of 9.44 million points and a magnification of 0.9x. Even glasses wearers have the entire picture in view, the size of the picture can also be reduced. 4K with 120p One focus of the camera is video recording. Unlike Canon with the EOS R5, Sony does not use 8K for video, but continues to use 4K, which is said to achieve the best results so far with an alpha camera. The sensor’s 12 MP resolution enables a full-pixel readout without pixel binning and without crop up to 4K / 60p. In this setting, the recording limit should be one hour without overheating – the EOS R5 only manages 30 minutes at 4K / 60p. The video recording of the Alpha 7S III in 4K / 120p mode is limited to this length The monitor can be swiveled, and the handle and controls have become larger, as with other cameras of the third Alpha generation. With Full HD, the Alpha 7S III even records at up to 240p. For time-lapse recordings, lower frame rates up to 1p can also be selected in S&Q mode. It is recorded internally with a color subsampling of 4: 2: 2 and a color depth of 10 bits. New codecs are available: XAVC-S-I records single images (All-I) with a data rate of up to 500 Mbits / s, XAVC-HS reduces the amount of data in image group compression to 200 Mbit / s thanks to H.265 compression. With HDMI 2.1, the camera can even output 4K / 60p as 16-bit raw files (ProRes Raw) to an Atomos recorder. Of course there is also a logarithmic gamma profile available (S-Log 2/3), which should enable a dynamic range of over 15 f-stops; the sensitivity starts here at ISO 640 (extended: ISO 160). According to Sony, the rolling shutter effect has been significantly minimized. The Alpha 7S III is equipped with a 5-axis image stabilizer in the housing, which, measured according to the CIPA standard, achieves an effectiveness of 5.5 f-stops; In video mode, digital stabilization (active mode) is also used, which also uses a gyro sensor. The information from this gyro sensor can also be stored in the metadata of the videos so that it can be used in post-processing for digital stabilization. Fast autofocus and 10 frames/s The hybrid autofocus covers 92% of the image sensor and uses 759 phase detection points and 425 with contrast AF. In addition to human, the AF algorithms now also recognize animal eyes – according to Sony, also at a greater distance than before. The AF sensitivity goes down to -6 EV series, the camera shoots at up to 10 frames / s. The mechanical shutter is designed for 1/8000 s. Sony is using two memory card drives in the Alpha 7S III for the first time, which can use both SD cards (UHS-II) and the new CFexpress type A cards. They are smaller than Type B cards and faster than SD cards. For most video modes, SD cards of video classes V60 and V90 are sufficient; CFexpress is only required in S&Q mode with 4: 2: 2 color subsampling and 10 bit color depth. The series mode also benefits from the faster cards; 1000 uncompressed raws in a row should be possible here. Sony plans to launch two CFexpress Type A cards on the market in September, which have a write speed of 700 MB / s and a read speed of 800 MB / s: The 80 GB version is said to be 230 euros, the 160 GB version 440 Cost euros and supplies electricity for 600 photos or 95 minutes of video.

Are you talking about that big goofy V-mount recorder? The one that's been discontinued? https://pro.sony/ue_US/products/camera-adaptors/axs-r5 The guys in the leaked photo shooting probe lens video of the cheesegrater Mac Pro are using a Ninja V. Why would it indicate that on the camera LCD? Something seems off...

I thought it was odd, the different record button really stood out.

If this really is the S3, impressed with the minimal rolling shutter, dude is whipping the camera around and rolling on the highway and not getting a lot of jello. Wonder what lens is being used, looks wider than my 16-35, maybe the Sigma 14-24 at 14mm or even the 12-24, at times the edges are really stretched. But I am seeing some of that wide angle wobble around 5:00 and the whip pan at about 5:17 shows the worst of the RS. Still looks pretty good IMO. Chris

I don't see anything as being deceptive unless they claimed zero overheating and such. All the professional claims is just marketing, whether it fits into your workflow is a you decision, not on Canon. There's plenty of info out now and there will be more before the first one ships on Thursday. The R5 is certainly shaping up to be a pro grade stills camera, so Canon's larger audience should be happy. Its more just really, really disappointing for those of us looking for a Canon hybrid video workhorse that checks all the boxes. A lot of us have been waiting for "The One" hybrid solution and this was it - on paper. A 5d-ish body with a cooling would be an easy pivot for Canon - the R5c. Maybe with all the noise we see one next year. It would sell really, really well. Chris